Learning through
play is a term used in education and psychology to describe how a child can learn to make sense of the
world around them. Through play children can develop social and cognitive skills, mature emotionally, and gain the self-confidence required to engage in new experiences and environments.
Most practitioners agree that children learn best through play as young
children learn the most during the first 5 years of their life. Play brings
about the deepest kind of learning. Learning through play helps the children
make sense of the world around them. Piaget once said "All knowledge is tied to action",
he was a big believer that children learn better through hands on experience.
Learning through play expands certain skills such as cognitive, physical,
social and cultural developments. Learning through play develops the child's cognitive
development with problem solving, logical thinking and learning language, also
develops motor skills, co-ordination, healthy life style, balance, special
awareness and building muscles which are all physical development. The children
also build their confidence, trust, sharing, social boundaries and learn how to
build relationships. Learning through play can involve varied contexts such as dramatic
play, sand play, water play, dough and clay play, table top play, small world
play and many more. Learning through play lets the children express themselves,
explore language freely, exercises choice and making decisions.
With learning through play you can use them
for all sorts of national curriculum lessons such as for maths instead of
putting the children in front of an exercise book you can get some different
shaped containers and sand and get the children to see how much sand is in each
pot, the volume of each pot etc. For history or English the children could make
up a play for a book their reading or about the Tudors, this does not only get
them engaged in the lesson but gets them thinking and more motivated. In play
there is no such thing as fail, so this builds the children's self-esteem which
is very important at a young age. Young children naturally decide to play, they
create their own rules and goals and control materials, people and time. this
enables their confidence and self brief to thrive, which in turn adds to a
state of emotional security, the more secure the children feel, the higher
their level of cognitive development. Learning through play can be as an individual
or as a group, it is not the opposite to work as the national curriculum is embedded
in to play with the children. Frobel once said "Play
is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the
free expression of what is in a child's soul." Frobel always believe that play helped
children consider moral matters such as good, evil, right and wrong so for
example cops and robbers. At a young age play is very important for the child
as it develops varied skills that they will need in the future.
References
Bruce. T (1996) Helping young children to play, London: Sage
Ward. S (2013) Third Edition, A student's guide to educational studies Abingdon
: Routledge
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